A jury found 26-year-old Rashard Fulton guilty of kidnapping with a firearm, armed burglary and grand theft.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A 26-year-old Jacksonville man faces possible life in prison after being convicted on Wednesday of stealing a gun from a pawn shop on the city’s Northside and kidnapping a Lyft driver about two hours later.
Rashard Fulton will be due back in court on Aug. 11 for a status hearing, as the judge over his case has ordered a pre-sentence investigation. A jury found him guilty of kidnapping with a firearm, armed burglary and grand theft.
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According to prosecutors, around 3:30 p.m. on Jan. 5, Fulton walked into a pawn shop on Leonid Road and asked to see a firearm. When an employee handed one over, Fulton ran out of the store with the weapon, which the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said was a MasterPiece Arms MPA30T 9mm semi-automatic handgun.
The employee then chased after Fulton, prosecutors said, but they could not catch him. The theft was reportedly captured on the shop’s surveillance video, and officers were called to the scene.
Through video surveillance and witness information, prosecutors said Fulton was immediately identified as the suspect.
About two hours later and only half a mile down the road, investigators said Fulton spotted a person getting out of a Lyft car. He then went up to the vehicle and began pulling on the back driver’s side door, which was locked.
When he couldn’t get in, officials said Fulton went to the driver’s window and lifted his shirt to show the gun in his waistband.
“A passenger was in the car at the time and begged Fulton to let her out, which he did,” the State Attorney’s Office said in a release. “Then Fulton forced the driver to take him to a business on Norwood Avenue. When Fulton got out of the car, the driver called 911. The passenger had also called 911 as soon as she was safely in her home.”
On Jan. 8, while JSO’s Community Problem Response Unit was assisting detectives with a search warrant on West 28th Street, detectives located Fulton nearby and arrested him, his arrest report states. The gun he had stolen and its identification card were found in his backpack, prosecutors said.
Judge Anthony Salem will sentence Fulton at a later date following his status hearing in August.